Planet Unknown beats Dorfromantik, Heat to win Germany’s biggest board game prize

Planet Unknown, the tile-laying planetary development and colonisation game from Ryan Lambert and Adam Rehberg, has triumphed in this year’s Deutscher Spiele Preis – Germany’s biggest board gaming award.

Dorfromantik: The Board Game, which pipped Planet Unknown to the Spiel des Jahres award just over two months ago, came in second place, while hugely popular vintage motor racing game Heat: Pedal to the Metal finished third.

Mysterium Kids took first place in the children’s games category, doubling down on its Kinderspiel des Jahres win against the same competitors in Gigamon and Carla Caramel.

The other nominees for the main Deutscher Spiele Preis were Earth, Marrakesh, Next Station London, Tiletum, Woodcraft, Challengers! and Hitster.

The Deutscher Spiele Preis has been awarded to Germany’s best board game since 1990, and unlike the Spiel des Jahres is voted on by the general public across Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

While nominally a ‘family games’ award, the winning games have varied heavily in complexity and play time over the last few years.

Recent previous winners have included The Lost Ruins of Arnak, The Crew, Wingspan, Azul, Terraforming Mars.

Runaway success Ark Nova triumphed in last year’s awards, with Quacks and Co: Quedlinburg Dash winning the best children’s game prize.

The award winners were revealed this morning at this year’s Essen Spiel game fair. BoardGameWire recently spoke to Essen Spiel’s new head about how the world’s biggest board game fair is reinventing itself for its 40th year and beyond.